RPG Skills

One of the secret world-building tools in the GM’s quiver in the FATE system is customizing the skill list; by default the book has 18 skills, and I find that I do not use them equally, which leads to players having to guess the DM.

Too, it’s a wonderful chance to educate, since you get to answer players’ questions before they have them: it’s a usability problem. “How do I attack?” can be answered by “there’s like 10 numbers on your sheet; one of them is labeled attack; roll that!” is a very tempting situation!

But I’ve always wondered, what do these numbers (statistics, attributes, approaches, skills, whatever you call them) actually represent? Are they nouns (D&D statistics, like Strength), verbs (some D&D skills, like Spot or Notice), adjectives (… I actually don’t know many systems that went this way; it would be Strong I guess), or adverbs (FAE goes this way with their approaches).
Or be wishy-washy, and take a mix, which is what D&D actually does with its skills (Spot vs Athletics).

I’ve been kind of interested in this, so I played around with a few ways to do it. Here’s my skill list as nouns:

This exercise revealed that several of my skills here are actually the same skill in drag — Knowledge and Arcana just split “education” down the middle into what you know, and focus on different halves. Others are pretty reductive or lose the shade of meaning I’d wanted — Finesse doesn’t encompass as many thief-like circles of competency as Cunning does to me, and at the same time brings in too many others.

I actually find this layout pretty satisfying — the names are pretty good for the concepts I gave them.

But it’s pretty awkward in speech, at least using my existing cadences — Make a Deadly check? Roll Strong? (I mean, I certainly hope you roll strongly, but that’s not my point 🙂 )

And it looks weird on a character sheet, to me:
Deadly: +3
Tough: +1
?

What’s your take? What do skills represent?

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[1] Charisma is complicated; this is high for characters that are charismatic, but it is much more of an investigation skill than a “I CHARM YOU NOW” skill. More later.
[2] It’s a Planescape game; Factions matter.
[3] Oh English, you so wacky.